Title: Memory Box
Rated: G
Characters: Axel/Lea and Saix/Isa
Word Count: 485
Notes: For sixpersimmons for the winter ‘10 exchange at oh_shit_santa. It’s shameful how short this is. Also, I don’t write tragic fics. Seriously. This ends with Sora saving everyone and restoring them to their original selves in Kingdom Hearts 3. Trufax.
–
The heart is said to be the keeper of memories. Even so, what Axel remembers is this:
Long summer days beneath an unchanging sky, and the mosaic stones of a courtyard, warm from the press of the sun. Turrets crowned by silver banners that glittered like tinsel. Towers spiraling high into rosy clouds, and arched windows with glass stained blue and purple.
A single morning when cool fingers wrapped around his wrist and a calm, vaguely annoyed voice said, “Didn’t your mom ever teach you the importance of being punctual?”
“Let’s ditch practice,” Lea said.
Surprise caught in the flutter of Isa’s powder blue eyelashes, a question in the slight lift of his brows. Lea dug in his heels, and Isa’s pace faltered enough for Lea to slip his hand from Isa’s grasp. Easy with how thin he was, the jut of his wrist bones sharp enough to be grotesque.
“I thought this was important to you,” Isa said. It was the way he said it that imprinted the moment in Lea’s heart. The way he implied that, because it was important to Lea, it was important to him.
And it had been important, Lea thought, yesterday when the other kids had shoved their struggle bats into the air, and shouted with bright-faced grins, radiant like the city. Yesterday, when small fists had bumped knuckle to knuckle, and throughout the raucous jubilation, Isa had stood collected and silent, his shoulder pressed to Lea’s narrow ones.
But today, Lea just wanted to lie on his back and let his skin absorb the heat from the stones. He wanted to buy a pair of sea salt ice cream pops and watch Isa’s melt down his fingers faster than he could catch them with his tongue.
Instead of answering, he smiled and shrugged. Isa seemed to understand because his mouth quirked and his eyes grew soft before he looked away, reluctant to reveal such tender emotions.
Axel wonders, had Isa known then what they would both become, if he might have been less hasty to stow away those emotions.
Lea offered his hand then, a gesture of amity. His hand, which would one day be wreathed in fire, flames swaying between his fingers like the sinuous steps of a Dancer.
But he was not yet Axel then, and Isa took his hand because he was not yet Saix. And they spent that day beneath the bruised sky and the shadow of the castle and smiled with their hearts beating steadily beneath their ribs.
That is what Axel remembers.
But the heart is the keeper of memories, and every day, his grow dimmer. Tomorrow, he will not recall the shimmer of heat above the flagstones or the snap of silver banners on a high wind. And the day after, and the day after, until even his name from Isa’s lips will fade like the tail end of an echo.
The End.
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